There is a new in-memory database technology, called Project Hekaton. Furthering Microsoft’s commitment to deliver in-memory solutions as part of their data platform, they introduced Project codenamed “Hekaton,” available in the next major release of SQL Server (no release dates announced). Currently in private technology preview with a small set of customers, which company officials are planning to expand to 100 before the end of this calendar year, “Hekaton” will complete Microsoft’s portfolio of in-memory capabilities across analytics and transactional scenarios, meaning Hekaton is for OLTP (similar to what xVelocity is for datawarehousing). It will provide breakthrough performance gains 10 times for existing apps and up to 50 times for new applications optimized for in-memory performance. And because it will be built into SQL Server, customers won’t need to buy specialized hardware or software and will be able to easily migrate existing applications to benefit from the dramatic gains in performance. See Breakthrough performance with in-memory technologies and How Fast is Project Codenamed “Hekaton” – It’s ‘Wicked Fast’! and Hekaton Query Acceleration Technology FAQs and Hekaton Breaks Through

SQL Server 2012 SP1 is out. Download it here. The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 Feature Pack was also updated to SP1. Download it here. The main feature in this service pack is support for the PowerPivot and Power View analytics capabilities in Office 2013. There are other new features in SQL Server 2012 SP1 as well, detailed in this MSDN post

Columnstore indexes will be updatable and can be clustered indexes. Available in the next major release of SQL Server

The CTP for Microsoft HDInsight Server is now available. HDInsight Server is the name given to the next iteration of Hadoop capabilities

Power View can be used on a multidimensional cube. It is Analysis Services 2012 that will be updated to support DAX queries being run on a Multidimensional model, enabling the use of Power View as well as any future tool generating DAX queries on top of a Multidimensional model. There are still no info about availability, but this is not included in SQL Server 2012 SP1. The update to the OLAP SSAS engine will occur at some date in the future, as well as an update to Power View for SharePoint and Power View for Excel. See Power View on SSAS Multidimensional. UPDATE on 11/29/12: The CTP for this is now available: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With Power View For Multidimensional Models CTP

Viewing Reporting Services reports on iPad is supported starting with SQL Server 2012 SP1, which has been released

iOS, Android and Microsoft mobile platforms: the commitment is to get data exploration and visualization capabilities working within June 2013. This should impact at least Power View and SharePoint/Excel Services

An interesting thing I saw was a new UI for managing SQL Server that was web-based. It’s pretty slick, but I’m wondering where that’s going to go

James is a big data and data warehousing technology specialist at Microsoft. He is a thought leader in the use and application of Big Data technologies, including MPP solutions involving hybrid technologies of relational data, Hadoop, and private and public cloud. Previously he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 30 years of IT experience. James is a popular blogger (JamesSerra.com) and speaker, having presented at dozens of PASS events including the PASS Business Analytics conference and the PASS Summit. He is the author of the book “Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012”. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.